ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

William Dudley Ward ('C.U.B.C.')

Leslie Ward · Published Vanity Fair, 29 March 1900

William Dudley Ward ('C.U.B.C.')
Leslie Ward ('Spy') presents William Dudley Ward, President of the Cambridge University Boat Club, as Men of the Day No. 777. The full-length chromolithograph shows a lean young man in profile, dressed in cream rowing kit — short-sleeved shirt with light-blue collar and cuff trim, white shorts, pale-blue socks, and brown lace-up shoes — hands tucked behind his back with collegiate ease. The caption reads simply *C.U.B.C.* The plate carries no ethnic caricature; Ward is rendered as the idealised, well-muscled English gentleman-athlete. The politics are those of Oxbridge rowing culture at its social peak: the Boat Race was a national spectacle, and its club presidents were celebrated public figures worth satirising in a society weekly.

Leslie Ward Public domain